


Alphabet Cities

by eigengrau



Series: Alphabet Cities [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Drabbles, M/M, Pre-Slash, Slash, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-10
Updated: 2012-07-03
Packaged: 2017-11-07 11:09:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 19,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/430425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eigengrau/pseuds/eigengrau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Take Phil Coulson and Clint Barton. Add one part sexual tension and one part snappy banter. Mix in travel writing and the alphabet. Liberally sprinkle with angst and fluff. Stir.</p><p>A series of one-shots, each focusing on Phil and Clint's relationship over the course of their travels for SHIELD.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

**Author's Note:**

> This is kind of a weird premise, so I'll explain. The theory is that each chapter is named after a different city or place. They're arranged alphabetically, so each it goes from Abu Dhabi to Belfast to Cherbourg... you get the idea. Anyway, enjoy.

 

It’s hot. Really freaking hot. Clint’s spent the last twelve hours perched on a roof, staring down the scope of a rifle, sweltering under Kevlar and nylon and waiting for a target that never showed up. The dusty plaza he’s surveying is empty, the cracked ground hazy with moonlight and streetlamps. He’s overheated, covered in sand, and probably smells like an armpit (His deodorant’s claims to be an antiperspirant were blatant lies).

 

He’s starting to regret ever accepting the offer to work for a shady government agency.

 

“Barton, report.”

 

He rolls stiff shoulders and presses a finger to the tiny, state-of-the-art comm. in his left ear. “I got nothing, sir. I think the bastard’s a no-show.”

 

Coulson sighs down the line. He must be just as tired of this as Clint is; being stuck staring at a computer screen in their cramped, sorry excuse for a safehouse isn’t much better than being up on the roof. “I’m calling it. We’ll have to go after him tomorrow.”

 

Clint checks his watch. The digital numbers blink back at him, 2:14 AM. “I hate to break it to you, sir, but tomorrow’s already here.”

 

“Just get back inside, agent.” Coulson’s eye-roll is practically audible.

 

“Sir, yes sir.”

 

The pieces of the rifle come apart easily, smooth and silent under Clint’s hands as he disassembles the carefully oiled metal and slides it into the waiting briefcase. From there it’s just a matter of shimmying down the fire escape, crawling along some brick ledges, and tapping at the third window he comes to. The curtain draws back and his handler’s face pops into view, blank and solid as ever. He slides the window open and Clint maneuvers himself over the sill, catching the threadbare red fabric of the drapes to steady himself. It’s been a few hours since he’s had anything to eat. A year ago, that wouldn’t have been a problem- a year ago Clint was eating every other day, and then only what he could scrounge from dumpsters- but he’s spent the last twelve months letting SHIELD’s crack team of nutritionists feed him protein bars and vitamin shakes in an effort to bulk up his skinny frame. After the initial week and a half of puking while his stomach adjusted, hunger turned from an ever-present gnawing to just another bodily function: a thing that bothers him sometimes. It’s been a weird transition.

 

His stomach grumbles and he eyes the half-eaten sandwich Coulson left on the table.

 

Coulson backs off to sit on the couch that takes up about three quarters of what passes for a living room. The low table in front of him is covered in laptops, wires, and half-drunk mugs of coffee. Even with the portable air conditioner whirring from a haphazard angle in the corner, it’s still swelteringly humid. The Abu Dhabi night isn’t as hot as the Abu Dhabi day, but the air feels like it’s heavy, weighing down on everything and everyone. Coulson’s got his jacket folded neatly over the back of the sofa (Of course) but his tie is loose, and the sleeves of his once-crisp, now wilted white shirt are rolled up to expose forearms muscled from filling out forms and karate-chopping HYDRA mooks. If Clint stares a little, he blames it on the lack of sleep.

 

“You should take a shower,” Coulson says, not taking his gaze off the screens. Clint can see the blue light reflecting off his eyes. “We’ll be in the car for four hours on the way to Sharjah. There’s shampoo on the shelf.”

 

Clint slinks into the bathroom, toeing off his boots and socks. The floor is slippery under his bare feet, and as he peels his shirt and bullet-proof vest over his head he allows himself a yawn.

 

The spray is cold on his back, and the water washing down the drain is a diluted red-brown. He isn’t sure whether it’s from the filth sluicing off his skin or if it came out of the tap that way. He doesn’t really care. He can feel his muscles start to relax and unknot, and he presses his forehead to the slick, cool tiled wall with a groan of relief. The long day’s tension is still coiled in his shoulders, in the pit of his stomach, and almost without thinking he reaches down to wrap a hand around his cock. He doesn’t think of anything as he strokes himself; just falls into the steady, monotonous bliss of fingers over flesh. His nerves spark, really alive for the first time in hours, and he spills over his loose fist with a sigh.

 

He’s blinking through the aftershocks when he notices a blurry shape outside the shower curtain. He tenses, tired body dropping into fight mode, but the figure doesn’t come any nearer. It just stands, still, a haze of black and white.

 

Coulson carefully closes the bathroom door, and Clint is too exhausted to be embarrassed. 


	2. Belfast, Northern Ireland

Clint stumbles through the rain-soaked streets of Belfast with one arm curled around Coulson’s shoulders and blood leaking out from under his jacket. They stick to side streets and alleys, navigating the tangled map of cobbles and asphalt with the grey sky above pounding on their heads. Phil’s hand is pressed to Clint’s side, the pressure on the bullet wound making Clint’s vision white out with every step he takes. A cab speeds by them and Phil shouts, but it keeps going down the wet street. Clint sags in his handler’s grip and starts to laugh.


	3. Cherbourg, France

 

Cherbourg is beautiful in the spring. Clint had seen an old movie about it once, when he was eighteen, ducking into a theatre to avoid some cops with a stolen transistor radio hidden in the folds of his coat. There had been a glowing French girl and her lover spinning around in glorious Technicolor- something about umbrellas. He hadn’t been focusing much on the subtitles- he was too busy being scared out of his mind that he would get caught.

 

He sits next to Coulson in the rental car and grins out the window as the sea rolls past. Coulson’s put some big band music on the car’s CD player and they’ve got the top down, and Clint can almost forget that they’ve come here to kill someone. And even then, this time at least there had been a full story in the file- a drug dealer, trafficking, mob connections. It feels better to know that the target they were sent to terminate had it coming. Sometimes, all Clint finds in the file is a photo, a name, and an address. That's the worst. Not knowing is the worst.

 

Clint glances over to Coulson. “Are we almost there?”

 

“Only a few more minutes.”

 

Clint feels almost disappointed. It’s been a helluva drive from the airport to their destination, and he wishes it could last a little longer. The air smells like sunflowers and saltwater. “Oh.”

 

A quarter of an hour later Coulson is pulling the rental onto the side of the road. Clint gathers up his briefcase from the back seat and fishes the comm. out of his pocket, screwing it into his ear. Coulson does the same.

 

“Right. You have the address?”

 

Clint rolls his eyes. “You know I do.”

 

Coulson nearly smiles at that. “Okay then. Let’s get this show on the road.”

 

Clint jogs the few blocks it takes to get to the street mentioned in his briefing. The door pushes open easily- unlocked- and Clint slips inside, darting up the narrow staircase with a sideways look at his watch. If everything goes according to plan, they should be in and out in less than ten minutes.

 

It’s two thirty-three in the afternoon as Clint reaches the right room. The target should be in sight at two thirty-seven. Clint and Phil should be in the car again by two thirty-nine.

 

The rifle comes together easily in his hands, perching on the windowsill, and Clint thinks wistfully of his bow. SHIELD frowns on “Robin Hood-heroics,” as one trainer had sneeringly referred to them, and he hasn’t touched an arrow in the field in months. It’s depressing. Clint doesn’t really like guns.

 

But. Beggars can’t be choosers.

 

“This is Coulson, checking in. It is 1433 hours. Report.”

 

“Hawkeye, calling in. Destination reached. Am in position.”

 

“Copy that.”

 

Clint can see where he’ll be shooting. Across the street a white-washed window frames his view, narrowing it down to a blue carpet, a few inches of sofa in the background. Pale, light curtains drift in the breeze. Clint shifts, getting comfortable. “How’s it down there, Coulson? Any sign?”

 

Coulson is waiting at ground level, sitting at a café and watching for their target to arrive. To anyone watching _him_ , he looks like he’s talking into a cellphone. High up, Clint can just see him from the corner of his eye. “None yet. Good coffee, though.”

 

“Get me some to go, would you? My throat’s like a desert. I won’t be able to talk soon.”

 

“Then I’m definitely not getting you any.” Only someone with Clint’s eyesight could catch Coulson’s smirk and still stay focused on the window across the way. He smiles back, though there’s no way his handler will see it.

 

“Have it your way, sir.”

 

A blue luxury sedan pulls up to the curb. A few seconds later, Coulson breaks the silence. “Target sighted. Moving up to you.”

 

“Copy that.” Clint lowers his head to peer down the sight of the rifle. The window across the street is magnified until it fills his vision, just those curtains and the blue carpet. At exactly two thirty-seven the door across the street opens and the man in the photograph comes in, beaming in a dark navy suit, his red hair slicked down. He lets out a cry, grinning, and a small figure comes running forward from outside Clint’s frame. The child wraps tiny arms around his father’s waist and Clint falters, finger hovering over the trigger.

 

“Hawkeye,” Coulson’s voice is tinged with urgency and frustration. “Hawkeye, take the shot.”

 

Clint is frozen.

 

“Barton!” Coulson hisses. “We’re running out of time!”

 

Clint’s finger squeezes, almost involuntarily. It’s like a reflex. One quick twitch, and there is a scream, and red splatters onto the curtains.

 

The pieces of the rifle are in the case and Clint is down the stairs before he can think. He leaves through the same back door he entered, hearing the frantic yelling and sobs from the open window over the street as if from underwater. Coulson grabs his arm and Clint looks up, startled. He hadn’t even seen him leave the café. Coulson rushes them towards the car. “Come on, Barton. Come on.”

 

Clint straps himself into his seat automatically and stares back at the panicking street as Coulson starts the engine. They drive away nearly soundlessly, the expensive engine purring as they speed out of the city limits.

 

“There was a kid,” Clint mutters, when they’re about a mile away. Coulson glances at him sharply.

 

“There was?”

 

Clint nods. It’s still sort of hard to get the words out. He’s killed before- he’s killed a lot of people, in fact- and he’s known that some of them had children. But he’s never-

 

He’s never seen one of them. Not like that.

 

Out of the corner of his eye he can see Coulson’s knuckles whitening on the steering wheel. “That wasn’t in the file.” There’s a pause. “I’m sorry. If I’d known…“

 

“It’s okay,” Clint runs a hand through his hair, taking a deep breath. “I understand.” It takes a long moment to gather his thoughts. To get his head screwed on straight. “It’s okay,” he repeats.

 

They drive in silence. After a while, Coulson glances over sheepishly. “I got you a coffee,” He says, apologetic. “It’s probably cold by now.”

 

Clint looks down at the white cardboard in the cup rest between them. He looks up at Coulson. “Thanks.” He takes a sip.

 

It’s lukewarm, but Coulson’s right. It’s a damn good cup of coffee.


	4. Da Nang, Vietnam

  


They make a silent promise, lying in side-by-side beds in the SHIELD med bay, to never talk about Da Nang. But every once in a while, in years to come, Clint will brush his fingers over the shiny pink scar on the back of Phil’s neck, where the skin graft sits like a patch sewn onto a pair of fading jeans. Every once in a while Clint lets Phil sit him down on the bed, pull up his shirt, and skim his palm over the words carved under Clint’s ribs.

 

Each, without the other’s knowledge, puts in a request to Director Fury that the other never be sent to Vietnam again.


	5. Eureka, Canada

Clint thinks it’s pretty funny that the first time anything happens is in a place called “Eureka.” It’s startlingly appropriate. Clearly The Powers That Be have a sense of humor.

 

There’s no sun. The research base is abandoned, and they were lucky Coulson found enough scrapwood to start a fire. Both of them are smoldering from the mission gone pear-shaped, angry at each other, at the mission, at the stupid booby-trapped HYDRA barracks in the ass-end of nowhere. Angry at the freezing arctic night. The fire doesn’t do much to warm them. So Coulson sits and pokes at the flames with a stick while Clint paces furiously, arms crossed over the chest of his parka.

 

He kicks a pile of debris. “Fuck!”

 

Coulson glances up through the wavering air above the fire. “Keep your cool, Barton.”

 

“Keep my cool?” Clint scowls at him. “HYDRA got away in their goddamn helicopters, and that explosion took out any information we could have stolen. Every agent in that task force but us is dead. We’re gonna freeze to death in the middle of the fuckin’ Arctic, and you want me to keep my cool? That’s a poor fuckin’ word choice, Coulson.”

 

Coulson glares. “Don’t act like a child. Having a hot-head temper tantrum isn’t going to help us get out of here.”

 

“Yeah, well at least I’m not ice cold like you!” Clint spits. He knows he’s crossing a line but he can’t stop himself. “Do you even care about the others? Could you tell which of them was screaming while they burned and which ones couldn’t because they didn’t have a tongue left to scream with? Did you even know their names? Did you-“

 

He hits the wall fast and hard, his head colliding with the concrete with a sickening crack. Coulson’s arm presses against his throat, his other palm planted firmly beside Clint’s ear. His breath is hot on Clint’s face. His blue eyes flash and his normally composed expression contorts in anger.

 

“ _Don’t_.” He hisses. “Don’t you _dare_.”

 

He releases him, taking an unsteady step back as Clint sinks to the floor. Coulson sits down heavily and stares into the fire, his back to Clint. For a long moment, there is no sound but the crackling of the burning wood and the wind of the Arctic tundra. Then, he starts to speak.

 

“Lang. Jackson. McKittrick. Rosen. Li. Sanders.”

 

Clint stares as his handler repeats the list.

 

“Lang. Jackson. McKittrick. Rosen. Li. Sanders.” He doesn’t turn around. “I knew their names.” He sounds defensive, and hurt, and stricken with grief.

 

Clint hauls himself to his feet. When he settles next to Coulson, the other man still doesn’t meet his eyes. “Shit, Coulson, I didn’t mean it. I don’t know why I even said it, it wasn’t- you know me, I run my mouth, I didn’t mean it, Phil, I swear.”

 

He doesn’t know why he kisses him. Or maybe he does, but he doesn’t want to think about it. Either way, their lips touch, and they’re going to die out here in the ice and snow, and Phil doesn’t pull away.

 

They stay like that for a while, breathing in each other’s air, eyes closed.

 

Then there’s a loud thwacking noise overhead, and Clint blinks.

 

“Is that-?”

 

Coulson lets go of Clint’s lapels and glances up. “I think it is.”

 

They stumble outside to stare at the helicopter hovering over the abandoned research station where they’ve taken shelter. The SHIELD insignia glints on the side, even in the perpetual nighttime.

 

“How did they find us?” Clint wonders aloud.

 

Phil at least has the decency to look embarrassed. “There may or may not be an experimental tracking device implanted in my lower back.”

 

“Are you serious?” Clint gapes. “Of course you’re serious. You’re always serious.”

 

“To my credit, we didn’t know if it would work or not. We were hoping we wouldn’t ever need to use it.” He shrugs. “I guess this was the test run.”

 

Clint feels nauseous. “This wasn’t… was this whole thing…” Engineered? Manufactured? Did six agents just die to test out a new piece of tech?

 

A look of horror crosses Phil’s face for a second. “Jesus, no!” He reaches out a gloved hand as if to touch Clint, then pulls back. “No. Never. We would never do that.”

 

“Okay.” Clint nods shakily. “Okay. Can we go home now, sir?”

 

He watches as Coulson nods back, silver flakes of snow falling onto his upturned face. “Sure, Barton. We can go home now.”

 

By the time they’re sitting on the helicopter, wrapped in thermal blankets, they’re back to “Barton” and “Coulson” and any mention of kissing is studiously avoided.


	6. Fargo, North Dakota, USA

It’s not so cold in North Dakota as it was in Canada. Still, Coulson is wearing one of those furry hats with the flaps hanging over his ears, and it’s pretty hard not to laugh at that.

 

“Hey, Marge, how’re things up in Brainerd?” Clint quips as they trudge to the latest in a long line of rental cars. This one has four-wheel drive.

 

Coulson rolls his eyes. “One more Cohen Brothers reference and I’m suspending your range privileges.”

 

Clint clutches his chest with one hand, looking offended. “That hurts, Coulson. I might have to spend the car ride silently sobbing into the night.”

 

“Not really endearing yourself to my sympathy, Barton.”

 

“Fine, no crying. But if I see you anywhere near a wood chipper I’m running. Just thought I should warn you.”

 

“Duly noted. Get in the car.”

 

The drive to the small town isn’t very long, and the mission goes smoothly. Clint doesn’t say anything, but he’s overjoyed that this job doesn’t involve killing anyone. He’s even happier that he’s finally got his bow back, though with some modifications. He fires off three arrows in rapid succession through the windows of a tech firm that was getting a little too close to figuring out SHIELD’s security codes. The second they hit the computers they latch on and the mechanisms in the arrow heads shoot off an electromagnetic pulse that fries the everloving shit out of their hard drives. Tomorrow there are going to be some very upset people in that office.

 

Clint stalks out of the building across the street, boots crunching on the snowy sidewalk. He can see the dark outline of Coulson’s profile in the car window, silhouetted under the sulfur orange light of the streetlamp. He’s taken the stupid hat off. Clint smiles.

 

He taps on the side of the car and Coulson rolls down the window with one arched eyebrow. Clint grins. “Excuse me, sir, I’m going to need you to exit the vehicle.”

 

“Funny. Get in, Barton.” They’re in no rush tonight- there’s none of the urgency in Coulson’s voice that usually comes with that command. It’s dark, it’s snowy, they’re in Buttfuck Nowhere, North Dakota, and there’s a box of donuts (Real ones, not those Hostess gas stop things) sitting on the dashboard, waiting to be opened on the drive back. Clint opens the passenger door and hums contentedly as the car’s heat drags him into its warm little world.

 

“Damn, it’s cozy in here,” Clint rubs his hands in front of the vent and peels off his jacket. “You should totally talk Fury into making this the official car of SHIELD. We could sleep in this thing, man, who needs a hotel?”

 

Coulson smiles quietly as he shifts the car into gear. “Not everybody spent their seminal years sleeping in a circus trailer. Most of us prefer actual beds.”

 

“I’ll have you know that my trailer was extremely comfortable!” Clint reaches forward to grab a donut. “You want jelly or Boston cream?”

 

“Glazed.”

 

Clint rolls his eyes. “Come on, boss! Glazed? Take chances! Live a life of adventure! At least try a powdered one!”

 

“Too messy.”

 

“I still can’t believe you wore a suit under a parka. What is that, Dolce? You fierce fashion fiend.”

 

Coulson sighs. “If I eat a jelly one, will you stop talking?”

 

“I make no promises.”

 

“Then give me a glazed donut.”

 

Clint hands him one, and Coulson is so concentrated on the road ahead that he doesn’t even realize it’s filled with red raspberry goop until he takes a bite out of it. He glares over at the archer. The archer smiles innocently. Coulson turns his gaze back to driving and takes another bite.

 

They pull into the parking lot of their hotel at three in the morning. The box of donuts lies half-emptied on the dashboard, and Clint’s discarded boots sit haphazardly on the floor, his legs curled up underneath him. Coulson kills the engine and they sit in the heavy warmth of the car.

 

“That went well,” Coulson says, the _At least, it went better than the last one_ hanging, implied, in the air between them. They very pointedly haven’t talked about what happened in Eureka. Clint nods.

 

Exactly two minutes later they’re crowded on top of each other in the backseat. Clint groans into Phil’s mouth and rubs against him from where he’s half-straddling, half-lying on his lap. Phil jerks up to meet him, struggling to squirm out of his coat.

 

Clint shakes his head. “Stop, here, let me-“ he fumbles at the buckle of Phil’s belt.

 

“So, we’re just going to-“

 

“Yeah, yeah, why the Hell not-“

 

“-Okay, just-“

 

“Fuck, Phil, wanted this for _months_ -“

 

“Jesus, me too.”

 

“Jesus has nothing to with it!”

 

Phil lets out a strained laugh and catches Clint’s face in the palm of his hand, calloused fingers stroking over his cheek. “This is such a bad idea,” He mutters, and kisses him hard.

 


	7. Granada, Spain

Spain is perfect. Every house is a different brilliant color, and the streets are rich brown clay. The city is vibrant and bustling and full of life. Women swish by in long, many-hued skirts, and the white noise of conversations and traffic and commerce floats above the buildings and the streets. The sky is pure, unadulterated blue.

 

Coulson is driving like a bat out of Hell.

 

A bullet zings in through the broken glass of the rear window, whizzing past dangerously close to his ear. In the back seat, Clint fires shots from the twin pistols clutched in his fists and curses in a continuous stream of creative swear words. The van following them through the winding roads is gaining speed.

 

Coulson swerves to avoid a gaggle of screeching pedestrians. Clint grunts as he falls back against the car door. He’s up again in a flash, but when he pulls the trigger of his guns they click emptily and he shouts out a four-letter word that is illegal in seventeen separate countries. “Coulson! Get these guys off our tail!”

 

“What do you think I’m trying to do?” Phil snaps, maneuvering around a fruit stand. He takes the corner at 67 miles per hour. Their followers copy them, rising up on two wheels and then slamming back onto the road loudly. The few people who haven’t scampered off the road already dive into the safety of the nearby buildings.

 

When Clint clambers into the front seat, he’s got his bow in one hand and his arrows in the other. “I’m going through the sunroof.”

 

“Is that a good idea?”

 

“Fuck no, but I’m gonna do it anyway.” The archer yanks the high window open. “Don’t make any crazy turns.”

 

“No promises, Barton.” Phil jolts in his seat as the other car rams into them. He presses his foot down harder on the accelerator. “Hurry up.”

 

“Yes, sir.” Clint hauls himself up so that just his legs are dangling through the sunroof, feet perched on the passenger seat. Phil listens absently as the stream of cursing picks up again, accompanied by loud “twang”-ing noises and the sudden squeal of the other car’s brakes. The smell of burning rubber fills his nose; he hears a scream, and then a crash. Chancing a look over his shoulder, Phil sees the other car lying crumpled on the side of the road, half an arrow sticking out from the fractured glass of the windshield.

 

Ten seconds later, the other car explodes in a ball of flame.

 

Clint drops back down, wiping the sweat and dirt from his brow with the back of one broad hand. “Well. That went better than I expected it to.”

 

“As that wasn’t a Pinto, I’m going to guess R&D finally perfected that explosive arrow design. I’ll be expecting you to file a report on them along with your usual debriefing. Understood?”

 

Clint rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “Count on you to turn an awesome car chase into paperwork, boss.”


	8. Hamburg, Germany

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's probably worth noting that the rating has switched from M to E.

City lights glints off the water as Clint and Phil gaze out over the canal, leaning on the railed fence. Around them the _Speicherstadt_ works quietly, the noises of the surrounding factories muted in the background. Hamburg sparkles in the distance. Clint’s briefcase lies at his feet and their comms, now removed from their ears, are nestled deep in Phil’s pocket.

 

“We should tell someone.” Phil says, eyes fixed on the water.

 

Clint frowns. “By ‘someone’ I’m guessing you mean SHIELD, not your parents.”

 

Phil gives him a _look_. “It’s been three months. I haven’t seen my parents in three years, I’m hardly going to bring you over for dinner. And anyway, I already told my mother I was seeing someone over the phone last week.” He sighs. “I’m not worried about my family. It’s Fury I’m not so sure about. There _are_ frat regs, Clint.”

 

“That’s not a revelation. I did actually read the rule book when I joined, you know.”

 

Phil raises an eyebrow. “So you just choose to ignore it, then? Why am I not surprised.”

 

“You know me too well.” A grin flickers over Clint’s face as a barge’s horn blares faintly, far away down the canal. “I don’t see the problem. Ignoring the rules has been working out pretty well so far.”

 

In the distance the wail of an ambulance echoes off the water, and Phil shakes his head. “What are we even doing, Clint?”

 

Clint looks at him. Worry is etched onto Phil’s forehead even in the dark, and Clint wishes, not for the first time, that his handler wasn’t so hung up on playing by the book. So he steels himself and cups a hand to the back of his neck, turning his face so that their eyes meet. “I don’t know, Phil. What are we doing?”

 

They don’t say much on the walk back to the hotel. But the minute the door of their shared suite locks behind them Clint drops to his knees and presses Phil back against the bed.

 

He fumbles with the belt but slides Phil’s fly down with steady fingers, stroking over the bulge in his boxers with a warm palm. Phil stays silent, weaving his grip into the short hair at the back of Clint’s head, tugging slightly. Through the fabric of Phil’s boxers Clint’s breath ghosts hot over his cock as he pulls back from the wet, open-mouthed kisses he plants on the black cotton. He jostles Phil forward for a second to slide his trousers and underwear down his thighs and then drifts in, almost reverently, to lick a stripe up the length of his hard cock, eyes half-closed beneath heavy lids. He teases at a thick vein with his clever tongue and smiles triumphantly when Phil can’t quite stifle a moan.

 

He loves this: tasting Phil, seeing Phil, making Phil gasp. Taking him apart and putting him back together. Clint’s done this a lot of times- being the lowest on the food chain at an all-boys orphanage isn’t much better than being in prison; Clint’s heard stories from guys who’ve done time and they match up eerily with memories of his adolescence. Then there had been the circus, and beautiful townie boys who’d sneak out back of the tent when the show was over to have some fun. Then after the circus, the street, and, well, he had to make money somehow. But he’s never enjoyed it before, never been able to close his eyes and take his time. There’s something different about it this way. The soft heft and girth of Phil on his tongue, the fingers stroking his scalp in time with the swirls of his tongue, the words of encouragement whispered, disjointed, when Phil is getting close- he actually _wants_ this, _likes_ this, and that’s why _this whole thing_ is different.

 

He stands and spits into one hand, wrapping his wet palm around Phil’s length and fisting the other in the soft silk of his tie to drag him in for a kiss. It’s sloppy and deep and inelegant. Phil tastes like coffee and toothpaste and sleep, and Clint’s mouth is all iron and spice and pre-cum. Their tongues slide against each other and they breathe through their noses as Clint pumps Phil with long, slow strokes.

 

“Fuck,” Phil murmurs, burying his face in Clint’s shoulder. His hips twitch forward as Clint twists his wrist, rubbing just right.

 

Then Clint is gone and Phil is left panting, half-bent over the bed and painfully hard. He blinks. Clint stands back, a few steps away, eyeing him like he can’t quite understand how he got there. Studying his face.

 

He looks away, and the spell is broken. Clint reaches down to tug off his boots. Phil is out of his shoes in less than a second and starts to hastily undo the buttons on his shirt, but a hand on his stops him. When he looks up, Clint shakes his head and reaches down to tighten the knot on Phil’s tie.

 

Oh.

 

He lets himself be pushed onto the bed by a strong hand on his chest, lets Clint maneuver him so that he’s sprawled out on the sheets, half-dressed, flushed and hazy. The archer tugs his own t-shirt off, tossing it into the corner of the hotel room before settling down and gently pulling Phil’s legs apart to nestle between his thighs. He grabs the tie, fingers caressing silk, and brings Phil forward for a kiss filthy with promise.

 

It’s deep and perfect, and even though Clint is on top and technically in control it feels like he’s falling into Phil and drowning. It’s not a wholly unpleasant sensation.

 

They break apart and he hefts one of Phil’s legs up over his shoulder, stretching his thighs further away from each other. Phil exhales heavily through his nose, eyes screwed shut as his hard cock bobs against the flat of his stomach, leaking against his pale skin. Clint groans, mouth starting to water, and leans down to mouth at the soft juncture of Phil’s thigh. He noses at the scruff of hair that darkens the base of Phil’s cock and inhales the clean musk of his scent.

 

He strokes Phil’s balls with just the tips of his fingers until the older man is panting, hips rolling in lazy twitches against the sheets. Clint rests his cheek against Phil’s thigh and slides his hand up to tease at the underside of his shaft. He’s painfully hard himself, the stretch of his cock distorting the front of his pants obscenely, but he pushes it away to focus on Phil. He looks utterly debauched, blue eyes hooded, lips glistening, chest rising and falling under his rumpled shirt. The striped tie lies twisted on the pillow by his head and his cheeks are flushed, dusted with pink.

 

“What are we doing, Phil?” Clint wraps a fist around Phil’s cock and drags it up his length torturously slow. It earns him a muffled groan. “You tell me, babe. What are we doing? What do you _want_ to do? Because I want you to be happy, Phil, that’s all I want. I want to sit here every night and watch you like this.” He teases a finger over the slit of Phil’s cock. “I want you to think about what you want, not what I want, or what SHIELD wants, or what everyone else wants. I want you to just fuck the rules for once, Phil.” A drop of pre-come shivers on the tip of Phil’s cock and slide down, shining in the low light of the hotel’s lamps. “Just fuck ‘em, okay?”

 

“Okay,” Phil gasps, and comes, shuddering, over Clint’s fist.

 

They spend a long time kissing, after that.

 

The next morning, Director Fury calls Clint’s cell phone and leaves him a terse message about, “Not fucking things up”, “Good eyes,” and something that sounds suspiciously like, “If you hurt him I will break you.” It is the most terrifying voicemail Clint will ever receive in his entire life.


	9. Inishmore, Ireland

The Inishmore mission isn’t particularly interesting on its’ own. The target comes on the same ferry that Clint and Coulson are on, and he’s dead before they reach the island. Coulson stands on the deck of the boat, staring out at the grey sea and the bobbing black heads of seals. Clint comes up from the lower levels, running one hand up the smooth railing and watching Coulson from the back as he pulls his windbreaker tighter around him. Even wearing heavy, worn combat boots, Clint’s tread is soft. Most people wouldn’t be able to hear him coming.

 

So of course Coulson turns around and hands him the thermos of coffee long before he plans to announce his presence. “All good?”

 

“Yup,” There had been no point in wearing comms for this mission; the roar of the engine renders nearly everything too quiet. Even up on the deck they practically have to shout to be heard. Clint moves closer, cupping one hand at the back of Coulson’s neck to speak into the shell of his ear. His voice is louder, clear.

 

“Target terminated. How’s it going up here?”

 

“No disturbances. I’ll call it when we hit land.” He murmurs back, resting his palm on Clint’s hip. He can feel the archer smile into the curve of his neck, where his scarf gives way to skin.

 

“Is this part of our cover, sir?” Clint mutters, balancing the half-full thermos in one hand.

 

“It could be.”

 

Clint pulls back with a grin. “I think you’re trying to seduce me, Agent Coulson.”


	10. Jersey City, United States

They get out of New York for one night, because while they both want to get as far away from work as possible they also don’t want to risk being _too_ far away if they get called in on a last-minute op. So they end up driving half an hour away to settle down in an old movie theatre across the river, popcorn in their laps and Phil dressed down to slacks and rolled-up sleeves, his jacket and tie left in the car.

 

It’s the closest to an actual date they’ve gotten, and they’ve been enjoying mutual handjobs, blowjobs, and general messing around for about three months at this point.

 

Afterwards, Clint wouldn’t be able to tell you what film they went to see (though Phil remembers, in great detail, because that’s how Phil works). When you spend the entire movie staring at your date instead of at the screen, things like plot, and characters, and the title of the movie tend to fall by the wayside.

  



	11. Karachi, Pakistan

It’s Monsoon season, and Clint and Phil are stuck in the safe house. The mission has been postponed until Clint can climb to his perch without nearly drowning. It’s the first time he’s had to deal with rain in the Middle East, and spending all day cooped up in a tiny three room apartment while the outside world floods isn’t normally his idea of a good time. It isn’t exactly Phil’s idea of fun, either.

 

Normally.

 

“Oh my God, do that again!” Clint bucks his hips and gasps into the pillow. Phil smiles against the bare skin of the archer’s back.

 

“Say please.”

 

Clint chokes on something halfway between a laugh and a sob. “Please, Phil, please, that’s not _fair_ , come _on_ -!”

 

Phil soothes a hand down Clint’s spine. It’s hot under his palm, sweat-slick and taut in the glow of the flickering lights from outside. They don’t often get to take their time like this; on missions they implement a plan of _wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am_ (or sir, whatever, terminology has never been Clint’s strong suit), with frantic hand jobs pressed up against walls or a few stolen fumblings in between stakeouts.

 

But this… this is nice. This is rare. It’s a novelty to be together in a real bed, being able to go slow, to make it last. Not that Clint’s going to be lasting much longer if Phil keeps this up.

 

“Oh, fuck!” He cries out as Phil jolts into him with a particularly hard thrust, hips snapping against Clint’s ass. He curls his fingers into the sheets and babbles incoherently as Phil pushes in and out, grazing over _just the right spot_ with every press of his body, finding the perfect angle and sticking to it with the focused determination that makes him the best at what he does.

 

One strong hand covers Clint’s mouth and his eyes nearly roll back in his head at the feel of the calloused palm over his parted lips and the tip of his tongue. “Shhh,” Phil whispers in his ear, “We don’t want the neighbors to hear.”

 

That’s the one downside of doing this on a mission in a country not world-renowned for their tolerance of homosexuality. Normally, Clint would be annoyed. But Phil’s hand moves down to cup his jaw, and then to grip loosely at his throat, thumb pressing into his pulse point to feel the throb of his heartbeat. Suddenly the only sounds Clint can make are muted, breathless gasps, and he feels lightheaded as Phil slams into him again, one hand on his throat, the other teasing at the slit of his cock. His arms tremble, muscles chording and rippling with tension as he comes into

Phil’s palm, white streaking out across his fingers as he clenches around Phil’s cock. He feels like he’s burning, from the tingling soles of his feet to the backs of his eyelids.

 

By the time he comes back to himself he’s lying on his stomach in a rapidly cooling wet spot, the back of his thighs slick. He halfheartedly wipes at them with one corner of the sheets and then gives up, rolling over and wrapping Phil up in his grip, slipping one arm over his chest. Clint is an aggressive spooner. “Why are you invading my side of the bed?” Phil complains groggily, threading his fingers through Clint’s.

 

“My side’s all moist and damp and stuff. I’m not gonna sleep on that.”

 

“I thought _I_ was supposed to be the neat freak.” Phil murmurs, smiling with his eyes closed.

 

Clint tightens his grip, clinging. He can feel the finger-shaped bruises on his hips from earlier starting to darken. It’s good. Purple is his favorite color. “It’s a clever ruse,” he buries his face in Phil’s shoulder, “I’m actually an organizational maniac, and you’re a slob. It’s all a plot by aliens.”

 

Phil groans. “No aliens. Don’t bring work into this.”

 

“Mmmkay.” Clint hums. A few minutes later, he lifts his head. “Hey, Phil?”

 

He gets a soft snore in response. Clint closes his eyes again and drifts off to sleep, the rain of the monsoons tapping out a drumbeat on the roof above them.


	12. Los Angeles, USA

Phil is on a three day mission to convince a California businessman that no, the thing that had taken up residence in his swimming pool was not a mermaid. It’s not a lie, actually. Mermaids aren’t the product of super-secret labs in San Francisco, and they don’t swim/crawl up the coast to make a new home in a chlorine-filled suburb. The… monkey-fish-thing that a handful of unlucky junior agents had to fish out of the pool was no mythical creature. It was, however, a pain in the ass to deal with, and Phil eyes the stack of paperwork on the dashboard of his car with trepidation. It’s not that he doesn’t want to do the work, filling out forms and scribbling his signature on dotted lines that wear huge paragraphs of tiny text like hats. Paperwork has never been a problem for him. Even when he was in school, he always had his work in on time, was always the first one to hand in his test. But he’s been in L.A. for a week. And he’s exhausted. And his eyeglasses are sitting on the bedside table in Clint’s bunk back at SHIELD HQ in New York, because the call came in at 2 AM and he had to leave in a rush, tugging his pants on while Clint watched from the twin bed, head propped up on one hand and hair mussed from sleep.

 

He squints at the first form on the pile, pinches the bridge of his nose, and gets out of the car.

 

 _I give up_ , he thinks, trudging through the sunny street. A Starbucks looms in his vision like the Emerald City. _I need coffee._

 

The door pushes open with an electronic bell noise, and Phil closes his eyes for a second to soak in the soft glow of muted indie rock on the speakers and the smell of double-cinnamon-whipped-cream-grande-frappuchinos.

 

It’s as close to paradise as he can get without dying or seeing Clint naked. He gets in line and waits, settling into the blissful scent of coffee. _Coffee_. Manna from heaven. Food of the Gods. Perfection. It’s like the day has instantly improved tenfold.

 

And then a shiny red Audi screeches to a stop at the curb out front, and Phil gets a sudden feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach. He’s got a sixth sense for this sort of thing- it’s what makes him such a good agent. And right now, his radar is going off like crazy.

 

 _Well, shit_.

 

The man who gets out of the Audi is short and flashy, wearing thousand dollar sunglasses, a sweater that probably costs what Phil makes in a year, and a million-watt grin full of teeth. He swaggers through the front door, takes one look at the line, and claps his hands.

 

“I’m buying this place. Everyone who is waiting for a coffee is going to have to wait longer- as the new owner, I get priority, and I need a triple mochachino STAT!”

 

Years later, when Tony Stark shows up in a metal suit in the middle of the desert and declares himself a superhero on national television, Phil grits his teeth and hops on a plane to Los Angeles, knowing nothing good can come of billionaire playboys and their games.


	13. Moscow, Russia

Clint shows up after three days of radio silence, leaning on the doorway of the safe house with one arm around the shoulders of an angry-looking redhead whose face matches the kill order in Phil’s newest dossier. Phil’s gun is level with her forehead before the door is even fully open.

 

Clint lifts his head like it weighs a ton and grins. His teeth are streaked with blood and his face is a mass of cuts and bruises.

 

“Hey, Phil,” he coughs, still smiling. “Can we keep her?”

 

Natasha sits in a corner of the room while Phil bandages Clint’s ribs. She watches them warily out of the corner of one bruised eye. She holds herself like a cat, spine ramrod straight and gaze flickering to the exits every few seconds despite the careful mask of calm on her face. It’s an expression Phil is intimately acquainted with- he’s wearing it as he smears antiseptic ointment over a freshly sewn row of stitches on the gash deep in Clint’s arm and mutters about following protocols.

 

When Natasha finally speaks, it’s in barely-accented English. “We need to leave the country.”

 

Clint nods, then winces. “Yeah, she’s right. We gotta get out of here.”

 

“Right,” Phil says. He glances at the Russian spy with her arms crossed sullenly over her chest. She looks back at him, her gaze cool.

 

“Hey,” Clint lays a hand on his wrist. “We can trust her.”

 

Phil doesn’t really believe that. But he trusts Clint, so he nods and starts to pack.

 

Three hours later, as they’re getting ready to board the SHIELD ‘copter hovering over the roof, Natasha throws a knife into the chest of a Ukrainian assassin sneaking up behind Phil.

 

He trusts Clint’s judgment. And eventually, he learns to trust Natasha.


	14. Nairobi, Kenya

The bullet in Phil’s chest is lodged in deep, but that’s just what it is: lodged in. Clint prods at the back of Phil’s Dolce suit and then shakes his head at Natasha. “There’s no exit wound. It’s in there somewhere.”

 

She’s already stripping off the bandana hiding her bright hair. “Here, stuff this in the hole. We’ll need to keep the dust out and slow the bleeding.”

 

“I object to your use of the word ‘stuff’.” Phil grits out from behind clenched teeth. “I don’t want you ‘stuffing’ anything into my open wound.”

 

“Oh, come on,” Clint chides, his voice tight under the mask of banter. “How many times have you shoved your ties into gaping bullet holes on my body?”

 

“Those ties were silk,” Phil mutters, vision starting to blur. “They were expensive. You should appreciate my sacrifice.”

 

Clint tries in vain to hide a wince and Natasha presses her kerchief to Phil’s chest grimly. Blood seeps out around the bullet meant for Clint’s head. The one that had been intended for Natasha is imbedded in the concrete wall behind them; the HYDRA agent on the roof of a nearby parking garage is twitching with an arrow through his eye, sent to his death throes.

 

“Not today, Phil.” Clint cradles the older man’s head in his lap, watching blood leak onto the street. “No sacrifices today.”

  



	15. Odessa, Ukraine

Natasha is cranky. She isn’t fond of Ukraine at the best of times, and this is _not_ the best of times. Most of the jobs she and Clint get assigned to are simple: assassination, observation, occasionally intimidation and defenestration. They watch or they shoot or they steal, secrets and weapons, codes and cars. But every once in a while they’ll get stuck with _one of these_ jobs. The _weird_ jobs. This usually happens after Clint has been shooting his mouth off again. Coulson says it’s Fury’s way of keeping them on their toes. Natasha says its Fury’s way of keeping them in check. Clint says it’s Fury’s way of being a dick.

 

Whatever he had in mind (And they’ll never know, because Nick Fury Is Not A Man Who Explains Himself), it’s cold in Odessa, and Natasha is very seriously not happy. As usual with the truly weird cases, the root of the problem is your garden-variety moron. Some idiot stole an experimental serum from a nuclear testing site (You’d think they would learn to stay away from radiation after the Banner fiasco back in ‘08) and fed it to several domesticated rabbits, which had proceeded to grow three extra eyes and fangs and terrorize a suburb.

 

That same idiot then hid the remains of the serum somewhere, trying to deflect blame away from himself.

 

That same idiot is now crying around a split lip and nursing bruises in several unfortunate places.

 

Sitting cross-legged on the bed in the safe house, glaring at the man tied to a chair in front of her, Natasha has goose bumps on her pale arms but does not shiver. She’s Russian. She’s had worse.

 

“I’ll ask again. Where is the formula?”

 

He whimpers, thrashing around, unable to see through the thick fabric of the blindfold. “I’ll never tell you!” He barks out, in heavily accented English.

 

Natasha rolls her eyes and breaks another one of his fingers.

 

Standing in the corner, Clint winces at their captive’s scream. “Jeeze, Tasha, is that really necessary?”

“Yes.” She glares at him, daring him to make another comment. “Would you rather I fed him milk and cookies until he talked? Because I don’t think that tactic works very well.”

 

“No need for that.” Clint’s breath is visible in the air, and for once he’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt. The heat is broken, and the radiator sits icy-cold and silent under the window.

 

Natasha turns back to their hostage, who’s crying softly. “Next time it’s your kneecap.”

 

“You wouldn’t!” He gasps through his tears.

 

“Seriously, don’t tempt her. And don’t even _think_ about making a PMS joke, I’ve seen her give a man a concussion for that sort of talk.”

 

“That man was you.”

 

“Details.” Clint waves as he kneels in front of the chair, head cocked to one side. “I’m curious: what makes a guy like you steal something like this? World domination? Revenge against the scientific community? Angry at the ex-wife?”

 

“I just needed the money! I thought I could sell them as pets!”

 

Clint sits back on his haunches, disappointed. “Seriously?” There’s a pause. The man doesn’t answer. “Boo. It’s more fun when they’re megalomaniacs. This is just boring.”

 

“Sorry you’re not entertained,” Natasha says sarcastically. “I could make him eat his tie. That might be mildly amusing.”

 

The man starts to blubber in earnest. Natasha can feel a headache coming on and wishes that Coulson were here. But Coulson’s back in New York, behind a desk, catching up on paperwork while he’s on medical leave. He’s still healing after the surgery from the Nairobi fiasco, staples and stitches holding his skin together where they had to cut it open to reach the enemy sniper’s bullet. Clint calls him, every night, ostensibly to debrief. But while he definitely knows that she knows about their Not-So-Secret relationship, he always retreats to the bathroom or the hallway when he’s on the phone, so that all she can hear is a soft murmuring from behind the door.

 

Natasha understands. It’s hard to get alone time when your lives are so inextricably intertwined with those of the people around you. She can’t say she totally gets it- she’s never had a relationship per se, unless you count the six months she spent undercover when she was fifteen, seducing a crime boss (She finally put the barrel of a Sig Sauer between his eyes one night when his hand crept up the skirt of her school uniform). But even despite her own lack of experience, she doesn’t need to question Clint’s behavior. He’s got his quirks. They all do.

 

It’s funny. Natasha’s worked pretty much alone for years, her only contact with authority the handlers when she was young, who really only beat or scolded her, and later her employers, who communicated through manila envelopes stuffed with dollar bills and information on targets. But now she’s wishing she had Coulson’s voice in her ear, or his calming presence standing in the corner of the room. It’s more than a little disconcerting how quickly she’s gotten used to this- to being wanted not just as a weapon but as a member of a unit, part of a team. It’s not good, getting attached like this.

 

She shakes the odd tight feeling in her stomach off. It’s probably just being back in Ukraine again messing with her head. She kicks the hostage for good measure. He howls, and she feels better.

 

“I wasn’t kidding about the tie thing.” She raises her eyebrows. “Feeling chatty?”

 

The hostage twitches, turning his unseeing face between her and Clint, and spills everything.

 

 


	16. Paris, France

A card hanging in the doorway announces that several languages are spoken in the shop. Clint chatters over the counter to the assistant, switching between garbled French, Russian, German, and English. Natasha rolls her eyes and puts down the book she’s been examining for the past ten minutes. “I think this experiment is a failure.”

 

Phil frowns. “He’s doing a good job.”

 

“He’s mangling the conjugation. And his accents are overwhelmingly American.”

 

Phil watches as Clint babbles over a battered, second-hand copy of Camus. The shopkeeper nods indulgently, smiles politely, and “Uh huh” s every once in a while.

 

Natasha shakes her head and goes back to her book. “Barton has many talents, but linguistics is not one of them.”

 

It’s true. Clint is terrible at languages other than English. And every once in a while Phil finds himself correcting an, “Ain’t,” or a double negative, and Clint will flush and leave the room. But as he listens to the archer enthusiastically jabbering in broken French, Phil can’t bring himself to worry. Anyway, they’ve got Natasha to do the talking. And Phil himself is fluent in seven different tongues.

 

Clint isn’t perfect, and they don’t need him to be.


	17. Quantico, United States

Clint stares out at the sea of men in suits. “Holy crap,” he says, rooted to the grassy lawn.

 

Phil’s face holds his usual blank expression, a little tenser than normal. “Exactly.”

 

“Can you tie a red ribbon around your middle or something? I’m gonna lose track of you in this crowd.”

 

“I warned you that it would be weird.” Phil says.

 

Clint shrugs. “For some reason I thought they’d all look like Jodie Foster.”

 

“Silence of The Lambs? Really? You watch too much TV.”

 

“Says the guy who goes into withdrawal if he forgets to TiVO Hoarders.” Clint shoves his hands into the pockets of his worn jeans and sniffs under his sunglasses. He’s incognito, not like anyone here could recognize one of the top assassins in the country. “I think I’m the only person here who isn’t wearing a tie.”

 

“I think you’re right.” If Clint didn’t know him better, he would have missed the tension in Phil’s shoulders. As it is, he shoots his handler a concerned glance.

 

“You okay, boss?”

 

Phil nods, but his mouth turns down at the corners. “I’m fine. I just hate dealing with the FBI.”

 

Clint raises one eyebrow. “Seriously? I would have thought you loved it here. It’s practically a men-in-black factory.”

 

Phil just glowers. “I’ve had to deal with too much paperwork from their screwups for there to be any warm feelings between the agencies. At least with the CIA you know you’re getting _some_ level of professionalism. These guys are too used to being in the public eye to get any real work done.”

 

“Sorry.”

 

He waves him off. “It’s not your fault. YOU get your paperwork in on time.”

 

“Only because you bribe me with sex, sir.”

 

They wade out onto the pavilion. Coulson blends into the mass almost immediately and frowns at the people around him. The grey and black and blue suits rush past in a tidal wave of uniformity, Armani and Dolce quivering with practiced, institutionalized formality. One in every four people is talking on a Bluetooth or a cell phone. The rest carry briefcases with suspicious locks and wear dark sunglasses. Phil, who is usually so comfortable, so perfect in his uniform of wool and silk, looks like he’s trapped in a skin that isn’t his own. He looks lost.

 

Clint can’t stand it.

 

He grabs Phil’s hand and ignores the quirked eyebrow it gets him in return, dragging him into an alley. He presses Phil up against the wall, kisses him, hard and deep and filthy with promise.

 

“Clint, we have to meet Agent Brooks in five minutes,” Phil protests half-heartedly.

 

“Why does it bother you so much?”

 

“Clint.”

 

He touches Phil’s chest with one palm, as if he can see the faded Army Rangers insignia tattooed there through the cloth. “Talk to me,” he pleads.

 

Phil’s shoulders sag, just a little. “There’s a limit to how much I want to blend in, you know.”

 

Clint knows. He knows how hard Phil’s worked to cultivate the image of a calm everyman, knows that while a lot of the persona is the real Phil- the supernatural patience, the cool head- there’s just as much that’s the result of years of careful practice. Contrary to popular belief, Phil is not just the suit. He just wears it really, really well.

 

It’s that suit that can either make him stand out or fade into the crowd. On the bridge of the Helicarrier it turns him into a beacon of authority, the only agent other than Director Fury who isn’t in a tac uniform (and who isn’t constantly gaping in awe at their new Not-A-Spaceship) The difference there, between the well-tailored black silk and everyone else’s bulky armor, only makes Phil seem sharper, more in control. But here, in this crowd of identical G-men, he starts to go fuzzy at the edges. Phil is less Phil when he’s in a place like, and while that’s the intended effect that doesn’t mean he has to like it. Even when he’s dealing with Stark, pretending to be little more than a beaurocrat, he’s got some sort of identity. Down in Quantico, he’s just another nameless agent. All these other men have had the same self-imposed training, that same cautious schooling of their features into a mask that nothing penetrates. Here, Phil is just another face in the crowd.

 

So yeah, it gets to him.

 

“Hey,” Clint presses his forehead against Phil’s. “You know I see you, right?”

 

“I would hope so. If your eyesight’s been compromised I don’t think Director Fury would be too happy.”

 

Clint snorts. “Don’t be an asshole.” He pulls back, aiming a light punch at Phil’s shoulder. “You know what I mean.”

 

“I do.” They head out of the alley and back out onto the street. Phil straightens his suit where Clint’s fingers have wrinkled the neatly pressed cloth and shifts his shoulders back. Suddenly he changes: his edges begin to go sharp again. The smooth calm slides into place. A few heads turn to look as he checks his watch, but they duck away immediately after.

 

Clint feels smug. “Good to have you back, sir.”

 

“Thanks,” Phil smiles quietly. “Let’s get to that meeting. The debriefing isn’t going to run itself.”

  



	18. Rome, Italy

Clint twists the knife in the other assassin’s side and wonders how the operation went so bad so fast.

 

“Barton, talk to me.” Phil’s voice crackles over the line as the hit man hisses and lunges up at Clint, blade still buried deep in his flesh. He narrowly dodges getting his eyes clawed out and deals a blow to the back of the other man’s skull, his elbow connecting with a sickening crack. Across the room, Natasha strangles a man with her bare hands. Her gun and knife lie out of reach, and she cuts off the man’s gasps, snapping his neck with a grunt. Just behind them, another man darts out from behind a pile of tires and heads for the outside world, suitcase swinging behind him.

 

“Barton, respond.” Phil says again.

 

“Sir, they’ve got the package.” Clint pants, wiping blood from his palms onto his trousers. There’s a half second of silence, where an unspoken question floats in the air between them.

 

“Permission to pursue package granted.” Phil says, and Natasha sprints out the door without a backwards glance, leaving her high heels on the ground. Clint follows close behind, adrenaline pumping through his veins and heart pounding. He can see the dark figure of their target- some low-level mobster, fleeing with _their briefcase_ in his hand- a few steps ahead of Natasha. The soles of her bare feet flash white as she runs.

 

The streets of Rome are hard to navigate at the best of times, but at night it’s even harder. Clint keeps his eyes trained on the blur of red that is his partner, trusting her to know the road they’re heading down. Trusting her to know better than to follow their lead into a trap. Clint follows blindly, trusting that Natasha knows her shit well enough to not go in blind herself.

 

He’s been told before that he trusts too easily. But that was a long time ago, by someone he didn’t like very much, and these days he prefers to think that he just knows when to trust the right people.

 

That those right people happen to be an ex-Russian spy and a literal 'secret agent man' is a fact that’s neither here nor there.

 

He skids around the corner, shoes slipping on asphalt wet from the rain that had slammed down earlier, as they stood in the Italian warehouse waiting for another in a long line of exchanges. Months of undercover work had gone down the drain in seconds, though- where the sellers had gotten their info, Clint couldn’t know. But their cover had been blown, and in the ensuing chaos- the greasy seller swearing at them loudly, Clint protesting in American-accented Italian- the first shots had rung out from above. The businessman had dropped, a red hole in his forehead, and the men who emerged from the shadows grabbed the briefcase before opening fire on Clint and Natasha.

 

Which hadn’t been the best decision, really, as now all of them but one were lying dead on the concrete floor.

 

Phil’s voice in his ear has gone silent as they run through the streets. Cars honk as the three of them dash through traffic, narrowly avoiding getting run over. Natasha makes a flying leap over a Ducati motorbike and its astonished rider. Clint vaults over the hood of a Volkswagen, using his strong arms to push him up and over the other side. Their target pushes through the crowd ahead but he’s running out of steam, and they’re gaining. Clint can hear his heavy breathing; can see the black Teflon case as it knocks against his leg. The men who ambushed their little deal aren’t professionals- they’re just goons for a rival syndicate. They have no idea what it is that they’ve stolen.

 

Neither do Clint and Natasha, actually. But it’s… a thing. And SHIELD really, really wants it. And Clint’s pretty sure that it had been glowing that one time during negotiations last week, though Natasha had just rolled her eyes when Clint mentioned it and continued beating both his and Phil’s asses at Texas Hold ‘Em in their hotel room. Natasha had rolled her eyes, yeah, but Clint didn’t earn his codename by being unobservant- he saw Phil pause as he went to reach for a new card.

 

Whatever was in the briefcase, it was definitely weird.

 

The traffic light turns red. The target dashes back into the street, running as fast as his legs will carry him. Natasha and Clint wade into the traffic, hot on his tail.

 

Then a shiny black car runs straight through the red light and slams into the target.

 

Clint and Natasha freeze.

 

The driver’s side door opens and Phil steps out, straightening his tie. He reaches down, yanks the briefcase out from the groaning man’s hand, and looks up, staring at his agents expectantly.

 

Clint waves. Tasha grabs him and pulls him across the road and into the waiting car.

 

Phil drops the briefcase onto the backseat and throws the car into reverse. “Was that the last one?”

 

“Yes,” Natasha looks cool and collected, but Clint knows she must be buzzing with the same nervous energy that’s making him bounce his leg up and down, up and down. All the adrenaline from the chase has sent a current through his body, and he’s having a hard time sitting still. He runs a hand over the briefcase. It’s warm.

 

“Barton, hands off the package.” Phil says, pulling down a side street to hide from the police cars that speed past them.

 

“That’s not what you said last night,” Clint grins. Natasha smacks him upside the head. “Ow! Sorry!”

 

In the rearview mirror, Phil's expression is unchanged. “We’re going to have to launch some sort of investigation, find out how your covers got blown. If there’s been a security breach we’re going to have serious problems.”

 

“Sorry, I think what you meant was, ‘Good work getting hold of the package, guys!’” Clint says. “Running is hard.  We can’t all sweep in on our motorized steeds and steal the glory.”

 

“Did you just call the car a motorized steed?” Natasha asks incredulously.

 

“Yes. Don’t question my semantics.”

 

“I’m just surprised you know what the word ‘semantics’ means.”

 

“Ha ha, it’s funny because I’m stupid. Never heard that one before.”

 

Phil turns around and glares into the backseat. “Don't make me turn this car around, you two.”

 

“Sorry, dad.”

 

Phil rolls his eyes. “Hand me the package.”

 

Clint passes it over. “Can I ask what it is?”

 

Phil raises one eyebrow. “That information is on a need to know basis, Clint.”

 

The archer frowns. “Let me guess: I don’t need to know.”

 

Phil smiles. He looks tired. They’re all tired- now that the adrenaline is starting to wear off the long days of undercover work and research are catching up with them. Clint realizes, in a rare moment of self-awareness, that he may be getting kind of cranky.

 

“No,” Phil eyes the suitcase, watching as it begins to glow a soft, unearthly blue. “According to Fury, _I_ don’t need to know.”

 

“Bullshit. You need to know everything.” Natasha crosses her legs and stares out past the windshield at the activity on the street ahead of where they’re parked. “You’re his right hand man.”

 

Phil shrugs.

 

Clint grabs the case out of his hand and drops it on the passenger seat. “Whatever. You’re the best agent in the whole place, present company excluded.” He ignores Natasha’s eye-roll. “And just because it’s glowy and distracting doesn’t mean we have to be tempted to take a peek inside, right?”

 

“You’re the only one tempted to do that, Clint.”

 

“Don’t judge me.” He curls his legs up under him, mindless of the dirt it gets on the seats. “Anyway, if it’s relevant, I’m sure we’ll find out what it is sooner or later. Maybe it’s whatever was in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction.”

 

Phil smiles the way he only does when he’s tired and doesn’t have the energy to pretend that he isn’t amused by Clint. “Sure, let’s go with that.”

 

“You’re both unprofessional, and I’m ashamed to be seen in your company.” Natasha states, crossing her arms over her chest.

 

They make the ten thirty flight out of Rome, and the briefcase miraculously doesn’t set off any alarms when they go through security. It rests on Phil’s lap for the entirety of the eight-hour plane ride. Natasha pretends to watch the in-flight movie and keeps watch as her comrades drift off, Clint’s head on Phil’s shoulder and Phil’s nose buried in the archer’s hair.

 

It’s adorable. She files away the mental image to use for potentially embarrassing both or either of them at a future juncture.


	19. San Francisco, USA

It’s more than four hours out of their way, but Phil passed out before they hit the highway out of Malibu, and never let it be said that Clint doesn’t recognize an opportunity when he sees one.

 

That said, Phil is probably going to freak out when he wakes up and realizes that they’re not on their way to New Mexico. Clint is hoping his boyfriend doesn’t brutally and efficiently murder him before they get to their destination.

 

Through some miracle of God (or maybe just Tony Stark-induced sleep deprivation), they’re driving through the city limits by the time Phil starts to blink awake. He looks out his window, then the windshield, before fixing his steady gaze on Clint.

 

“Before you kill me and hide the body behind a dumpster somewhere, I swear there’s an explanation for this.”

 

Phil’s face holds the same dangerous calm as just before he incapacitates a roomful of trained assassins. “I would never do that, Clint.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“I would bury your various body parts in assorted areas over the country and pour lime on them. I’d never be so crude as to just leave you in an alley. I might get caught.”

 

Clint swallows. “Right.”

 

Phil drags a hand over his face and sighs. “Why are we in San Francisco, Barton?”

 

Oh shit. He’s back to Barton. On second thought, this may not have been the best plan Clint’s ever made. But dammit, he’s been looking for an excuse to get the two of them to Frisco for months, and he’s not giving up now.

 

“Well…” he drags the word out, “A few months ago I was on the internet, and I discovered this store that looked really cool. And they had this thing I wanted to get. So I put in an order and now we’re going to pick it up.”

 

Phil sighs. “If we’re here to get some sort of custom-made sex toy…”

 

“We’re not.” Clint flushes.

 

“Why couldn’t you just have them ship it to you?”

 

“I…” Clint pauses. “It’s kind of fragile.” Phil stares at him. “Just trust me, okay?”

 

Phil sags against his seat. Even after all the sleep he got while Clint drove, he still looks totally wiped out. Clint gets that. Going straight from one mission into another can be pretty exhausting, especially when the first involves Tony Stark and the second is dealing with some sort of UFO (Unidentified Falling Object- Flying in the past tense) out in a crater in the middle of the desert.

 

“This better be worth the lecture I’m going to get from Fury when I’m half a day late arriving in New Mexico.”

 

“It will be.” Phil gives him a look. “Trust me,” Clint repeats as he scans the sidewalk for a good place to stop. He accomplishes a truly awful parallel park (“Remind me again how you passed your driving test?”) and clambers out of the car, buzzing with nervousness and sneaking looks at Phil, who follows behind him with his hands in his pockets and one arched eyebrow.

 

The store is small, tucked away between a sporting goods shop and a place advertising itself as a candy emporium. Phil gazes at the sign above the door with genuine confusion.

 

“Lee’s Antiques?” He asks. Clint nods, and pushes the door open.

 

A bell goes off overhead- a real one, struck by the hinges and ringing out through the cluttered interior of the store. It’s dark and full of shelves of knick-knacks, trinkets, and memorabilia, tin lunchboxes and cracked Tiffany lamps. Old movie posters hang on the walls, and a phonograph squeezed in beside a taxidermied bluebird and its equally preserved cardinal mate plays a fuzzy version of a Cole Porter song. Behind the counter, a man with thick glasses sends a smile in their direction.

 

“Hi!” He calls out over the faint scratch of the record. “How can I help you boys?”

 

Clint grabs one of Phil’s hands in his own, ignoring the perturbed look he gets in return, and pulls him through the store. “We’re here to pick something up, actually.” He smiles back at the shopkeeper. “Are you Kirby? Kirby Lee?”

 

“Yep.” The old man reaches forward to shake Clint’s free hand.

 

“I’m Clint Barton, we talked on the phone.”

 

“Oh! Right! Of course!” Kirby smacks the counter. “I’ve got it in the back, all packed up like you asked. You paid online, right?” He eyes Phil. “Is this the friend?”

 

“Um…”

 

Kirby’s eyes flick down to where Clint and Phil’s hands are joined and winks approvingly. Phil, for once, looks like he has no idea what’s going on. “I’ll just go and get it,” Kirby says, and shuffles off into a back room.

 

Phil turns to Clint. “I’m ‘the friend’?”

 

Clint shrugs. “He asked who I was getting it for. I told him it was a gift.”

 

“A gift-? Clint, you didn’t have to get me anything.” Phil’s gaze softens a little.

 

“I missed your birthday because I was in Cairo and I missed Christmas because you were in Portugal. And, I mean…” He rubs the back of his neck sheepishly, “It’s nearly June. And it’s been five years.”

 

Phil opens his mouth and closes it again, speechless. He closes the gap between them, pressing his forehead to Clint’s. He goes to say something- which of course is when Kirby comes out of the back with a small black box in his withered hands. They break apart, startled, and the old man rolls his eyes.

 

“You’re in San Francisco. Stop worrying.”

 

The tops of Phil’s ears turn pink. Clint laughs. “Thanks. It means a lot.”

 

Kirby just shakes his head and hands him the box. “It was nothing. Always glad to help a collector.”

 

They emerge from the tiny store and head blinking into the bright sun of the California afternoon. Clint squeezes Phil’s hand and offers him the box. “Come on, open it. I promise it won’t bite. This time.”

 

Phil squints at it. “Should I even bother asking what’s inside?”

 

“No. Come on.” Clint smiles, but inside he’s terrified. What if Phil doesn’t like it? Then he’s fucked. He tries to tamp down on his anxiety as Phil gently pries off the lid.

 

And stares.

 

And stares.

 

And then looks up at Clint, mouth falling open, and then back down at the box.

 

“Is that-? Is it-?” He stammers. Clint nods, biting back a grin. “Oh my God, Clint.”

 

“So was it worth the trip?” he asks. Phil responds by grabbing his face and kissing him until all the air goes out of his lungs and they’re left breathless on the sidewalk. Phil pulls away and laughs, an honest-to-God laugh, and kisses him again.

 

“Am I the best boyfriend in the world or what?” Clint says, when he’s got his mouth back. Phil threads their fingers together.

 

“This or any other world.” He looks back down at the box and starts to laugh again. “This must have cost you a small fortune.”

 

“Eh, it wasn’t so bad.” It was more than what he made in a year. But he isn’t about to tell Phil that. “I just… I knew you didn’t have it. And I figured, why the Hell not, right?”

 

Phil cradles it in his hand, staring down at it reverently. “There are only three of these in the world. One of them is in a museum and the other belong to Stark.”

 

“And now one belongs to you.”

 

He reaches into the box and holds the thin, delicate cardboard up like it could shatter at any second. “Captain America Trading Card #1,” he mutters, disbelieving.

 

Clint looks over his shoulder and studies the first superhero the world ever knew, punching Hitler square in the jaw. “He had a mean right cross, I’ll give him that.”

 

“I-“ Phil gives up trying to talk and kisses Clint instead. “Thank you. So much. Words literally cannot express how much I want to thank you right now.” He smiles against Clint’s lips. “Why are you so good to me?”

 

Clint figures that’s a rhetorical question. He can’t imagine someone willfully _not_ being good to Phil, who’s all Clint’s favorite things rolled up into a Dolce  & Gabbana suit. So instead he just smiles back.

 

“Happy anniversary, babe.”

 


	20. Tucson, USA

The gas station is loud for a few seconds, then quiet again. Phil strides out, straightening his tie, half-listening as the check-out girl dials the cops and starts babbling about robbers and tae bo. At the pump, Clint dozes in the air-conditioned chill of the car and snores lightly. Phil smiles and tosses the pack of powdered Donettes onto his lap. Clint startles awake instantly, catching the crinkling plastic in one hand on reflex. He blinks at the cheap snack food, then up at Phil. “Is it tomorrow already?”

 

“Yep.” Phil taps the clock radio as he slides into the driver’s seat. It’s 1:07 AM.

 

A lot has changed over the past few years. Clint’s switched his parka out for a t-shirt and jeans, and the suit Phil wore under his thermal jacket has long since been destroyed and replaced. The desert highway of Arizona looks nothing like North Dakota. There are more lines around Phil’s eyes. There are more scars on Clint’s body. But they look at each other over mini donuts and the space between them sings in the early morning.

 

“Chocolate _and_ powdered?” Clint asks. “You’re a man of adventure, Agent Coulson.”

 

“I try.” Phil leans over and presses a sweet kiss to Clint’s lips.

 

Malibu and San Francisco are long behind them. But it’s a long road to New Mexico, and neither of them are complaining.

  



	21. Utica, USA

Clint resists the urge to sink into the passenger seat of the car. The house they’re parked outside of is clean and suburban. It has an actual white picket fence. Clint didn’t know that those really existed outside of sitcoms. Apparently they do.

 

Beside him, Phil stares out at the sunny street blankly. He’s wearing the face he uses for dealing with particularly tricky situations, ones that usually involve large cover-ups and end with people dead.

 

Clint _hates_ that face.

 

Phil takes a deep, shuddering breath, and even though Clint is terrified about everything this town and this car and this day means, he reaches over and grabs Phil’s hand in his.

 

“Hey,” he mutters, smoothing his thumb over the callous on Phil’s finger that’s from both hours of writing reports and hours of pulling the trigger of a gun. “You can do this.”

 

Phil nods. He doesn’t trust his voice right now. Clint isn’t going to make him talk, not when he looks like this. So he presses his lips to Phil’s knuckles, untangles their fingers, and opens his door. He crosses in front of the car.

 

He waits for a full sixty seconds for Phil to get out and join him on the sidewalk.

 

His suit is itchy and his tie feels too tight. Clint watches Phil go up the driveway, a few steps ahead of him, and wishes he knew what to say. Clint’s been to a lot of funerals since he was a kid, but he’s never quite figured out how to deal with them. There are just some things that you can’t do. Some things that can’t be put into words. Clint isn’t a comforter, and there are a million things he wants to say to Phil but he can’t figure out how to do it.

 

He jogs the few steps to catch up with Phil and takes his hand again. Phil’s mask is cracking, but as he squeezes Clint’s palm some of the wrinkles smooth from the corners of his eyes.

 

The door stands in front of them, blank white except for the brass numbers nailed up for all to see. Number 29. Clint takes the first step forward and pretends not to notice when Phil sags against his shoulder. He holds him up and makes it look like he’s standing on his own.

 

Phil is the strongest person he knows, aside from Tasha. This is the least he can do.

 

The door opens, and a middle-aged woman with the same blue eyes as Phil stares back at them. She’s been crying, and her black dress is as neatly pressed as Phil’s suit.

 

“Hey, Jen.” Phil smiles weakly. “It’s been a while.”

 

Phil’s sister pulls him forward into a hug, letting out a full-body wracking sob. Clint stands on the doorstep and watches.

 

Phil’s mother’s funeral is the first time Clint meets the Coulson family. He stands on the outskirts of the cemetery and shakes hands with all of Phil’s siblings (There are five in all, three sons of Coul and two daughters, not to mention nieces and nephews and cousins). Clint’s never seen a family this big, or this close. He sees how they welcome Phil with open arms and wonders how he can stand to stay away from them.

 

On the drive back to the city, Phil is the one who reaches out for Clint’s hand. He meets his eyes over the flashing lights of the freeway, bright and yellow in the late night.

 

“She would have loved you,” he says softly.

 

Clint nods.

 


	22. Vatican City, Italy

An arrow pierces the neck of a zombie priest, severing the last few tendons and sending the head tumbling off the bloodstained shoulders and onto the marble floor. The decapitated cassock twitches and collapses into a bloody heap as Clint lets fly with another arrow. It lands in the chest of an undead bishop. He glances down at the wound, snarls, takes a step forward, and promptly blows up. The explosion takes out another gaggle of zombies.

 

Clint smiles. “Hey, Coulson, how’re things going on your end?” He calls over, aiming a kick at a reanimated cardinal.

 

A few feet away, Coulson fires off a high-caliber round into a crowd of the undead. His suit is impeccable somehow, despite the blood slicking the floor. “Pretty well, thanks you for asking.” He shoves the barrel of his gun into the gaping maw of an altar boy and blows his decaying head to pieces.

 

How a flesh-decaying, rabies-inducing virus got released into the Vatican City is a matter for later. There will be paperwork.  But for now Clint garrotes a bishop with the string of his bow. As it drops down, head rolling away, he looks around the hall. Gore covers every surface, body parts litter the ground. Clint winces. “I’d hate to be the janitor.”

 

“I saw Father Lagucci gnawing on him earlier. I think he has bigger problems.” Phil knocks the head of the last zombie of with a particularly forceful back fist. The rotting corpse splatters across his shirt and crumples to the ground. Phil wipes his hand on the leg of his trousers with a sigh. “I _liked_ this suit.”

 

“Ill buy you a new one for Christmas.” Clint says, surveying the damage around them. Phil snaps his fingers.

 

“That reminds me. Jen called.”

 

“Oh yeah?” Any mention of Phil’s sister sets Clint a little on edge. It’s not that he doesn’t like her- the one time they’ve met, she seemed perfectly nice, if weepy under the circumstances- but Clint finds the prospect of having to appeal to Phil’s family worrying. Hell, appealing to Phil himself seemed hard enough back in the day.

 

“She wants me to head up to Utica for Christmas this year.”

 

Clint glances up, feeling his stomach do a flip that has nothing to do with the mutilated corpses he’s kneeling by. “Oh?”

 

Phil nods as he strips off his ruined jacket. “I think I’m going to take her up on it. I haven’t spent Christmas with my family in years.”

 

Clint’s heart sinks.  He knows it’s petty, but he’s gotten used to spending his holidays with Phil and Tasha, and after all his pre-SHIELD Christmases (most of which took place in unheated trailers/foster homes/homeless shelters/soup kitchens/cardboard boxes in Central Park) he’d rather not go back to old habits. He knows he can always sleep over with Natasha, whose idea of seasonal celebrations involves copious amounts of vodka, but he’d prefer to spend the few days he has off lying in bed with his man.

 

But of course Phil deserves to spend Christmas with his family. He hasn’t been able to really see them in years, and Clint knows how guilty Phil felt when he got the news about his mother’s death, and for not being there when they needed him. But Clint has seen how they folded him back into their lives, even after so many years of what basically amounted to radio silence, punctuated only by birthday cards and the occasional phone call. He slots back into that life, that cozy normal family, seamlessly. Clint’s never had anything like that.

 

Phil deserves it.

 

“-Clint? Focus.”

 

He blinks as Phil waves a hand in front of his face. “Sorry, what?”

 

“I said, we need to call this one in. They’re going to need to get a clean-up crew in here ASAP.” He looks around. “We got lucky on this one. Thank God our containment strategy worked, can you imagine what it would be like trying to quarantine Rome?” he offers a hand and Clint takes it, hauling himself to his feet. “You need a change of clothes. You’re covered in blood.”

 

“Also brains. And so are you, don’t be a hypocrite.” Clint flicks some gray matter off his shoulder.

 

Phil hums quietly, then blurts out, “So I may have told Jen that you were a cellist.”

 

Clint stares. “Excuse me?”

 

“I know it’s out of left field but I couldn’t exactly tell her that you were a highly skilled government operative. It was the first thing that popped into my head.”

 

“What.”

 

“She thinks I’m a CPA but I figured you didn’t look the type. And I needed to come up with an excuse for the irregular hours. And I was listening to YoYo Ma at the time.”

 

Clint stared at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

 

Phil let out a long-suffering sigh. “When we go to my sister’s. She asked what you did for a living and I had to tell her _something._ ”

 

As Clint opens his mouth to respond, Phil suddenly pulls out his gun and fires a shot over Clint’s shoulder. There’s a loud splat, and when Clint turns around the twitching body of a half-decayed zombie in a big hat is lying on the floor behind him.

 

“Jesus!”

 

“This is hardly the time or place to be taking the Lord’s name in vain, Barton.” Phil rolls his eyes, holstering his weapon.

 

“You just killed the pope, Phil.”

 

He raises an eyebrow archly. “I guess I’ll be getting coal in my stocking this year.”

 

“That’s gotta be some sort of blasphemy.” Clint glances over at the exit. “We should probably get out of here.”

 

Phil strides out of the heavy wooden door and Clint jogs after him. The streets of the Vatican City are empty except for a few pigeons, and frost ghosts out of the grey sky onto old buildings. The square is weirdly peaceful in spite of the piles of copses indoors.

 

“Sorry to spring the cello thing on you,” Phil says as he pulls his phone from his pocket and hits seed dial. “I know you’re nota fan of using covers, but I didn’t want to risk anything.” He rattles off a long stream of code down the line and hangs up, turning back to Clint. “Are you okay?”

 

Clint is still processing what Phil is saying. “Wait, you want me to come with you?”

 

Phil shoots him a look that says, “Don’t be an idiot.” It’s an unfortunately familiar look. “Of course. I'd never hear the end of it from Jen if I brought you to my mother’s funeral but not to Christmas dinner.”

 

A slow, relieved smile creeps over Clint’s face. “Yeah? Really?”

 

The expression Phil wears is a combination of exasperated and fond. “Yes, Clint. Really.”

 

A black van pulls up and a team of agents in HAZMAT suits jumps out, tramping up into the building that Clint and Phil just left. The two of them settle into the car. Phil plucks at his ruined shirt in irritation.

 

“I hate zombies. Why can’t we just have a nice, neat emergency for once?”

 

Clint grins. “Have you ever thought about how weird our jobs are?”

 

Phil looks over at him and smiles. “Constantly.”

 


	23. Warsaw, Poland

Clint finally gets to find out what was in the briefcase they recovered in Rome while he’s lying in a bed in Poland, limbs stretched out over the comforter. They’re between operations, waiting for tomorrow, and Phil’s got a paperback out and is reading it intently through heavy-framed glasses, one hand resting on Clint’s thigh and kneading absently. Clint’s getting ready to fall asleep, and the light of the bedside lamp is just fading to a hazy glow behind his eyelids when Phil’s cell phone starts to vibrate on the nightstand. He sighs and picks it up, not bothering to check the caller ID. Only three people have the number, after all. One of them is beside him, and the other two only call when they have to.

 

“Coulson.”

 

Clint lifts his head, blinking to clear away the grogginess and watching the way Phil’s mouth tightens as he listens to the other caller. He props himself up on his elbows as Phil takes off his glasses, says, “Yes, sir,” and, “Of course, sir,” and, “We can call in another team for the second part of the op, it’s not a problem.” He repeats himself- “Yes, sir,” with more emphasis on the _yes_ \- and snaps the phone shut.

 

Clint sits up. “So I’m guessing that wasn’t Natasha.”

 

“Unless you’ve decided to start referring to her as ‘sir’ then no, it wasn’t Natasha.” Phil raises an eyebrow. “If you _have_ decided to start referring to her as ‘sir’ I’m going to have to put a red flag in your file for suicidal intent.”

 

“Well shit, there goes my death wish.” Clint drapes a leg over Phil’s, rubbing his foot against a muscled calf. “Want me to start packing?”

 

“Yeah.” Phil dog-ears his page. “We’ve got to head back Stateside. Fury’s waiting at the Pegasus Facility. We’ve got tickets for on the red eye, so we should be in the car by about…” he glances at the digital clock on the bedside table, “midnight, at the latest.”

 

Clint sighs. “And here I thought I was going to get to sleep at a sane hour for once.”

 

Phil pats his leg lightly and pulls back the sheets, stepping boxer-clad out of bed. “You can sleep on the plane.”

 

“Mmm, that’ll be fun.” Clint makes a face. He’s a nervous flyer unless he’s in the pilot’s seat- which is actually a pretty good metaphor for his sex life, he’ll have to remember that one- but it’s a little less anxiety-inducing when Phil’s there (Which is also an accurate way to look at their relationship). He clambers out of the cocoon of blankets he’s tangled in and starts to pull on his jeans from where he’d dropped them on the floor earlier. “So what’s the deal? What’s so important Fury had to pull us out mid-assignment?”

 

Phil runs a hand through his thin hair, patting it down so that it looks less like he’s been thrashing around on the pillows in the recent past. “Remember that case we picked up in Rome?”

 

“The one that glowed? And then you hit the mob guy with your car? Kind of hard to forget, babe.”

 

Phil shrugs on his shirt, doing up the buttons one by one. “We think it has something to do with the New Mexico incident. We’ve had Doctor Selvig analyzing it and comparing notes about Bifrost with some other scientists we’ve got on hand, and it’s apparently started emitting some sort of gamma radiation-“

 

Clint whistles. “That’s some pretty hard-core stuff. Should we have been touching that briefcase? Are we all going to get cancer now?”

 

“I doubt it.” Phil zips up his bag. He never unpacks on missions like this- keeps all of his clothes and things neatly organized, only pulling them out when he needs them and carefully folding them back in when he’s done. It makes packing a lot easier. Clint on the other hand is shoving sneakers and sweatshirts into his duffel willy-nilly, trying to make everything fit. “But Fury wants someone to keep an eye on things. Just in case.”

 

“And here I thought they wanted me around for my dashing good looks.”

 

“No, that’s just _my_ motivation for keeping you around.” Phil presses a quick, chaste kiss to his forehead, straightening up and pulling on his rumpled but still meticulous suit jacket.

 

They make it to the airport with time to spare, because Phil is nothing if not efficient, and they get through security with their government passes. The departures lounge is nearly empty this late at night, and Clint sprawls out across an entire row of seats, dropping his head into Coulson’s lap as the older man retrieves his eyeglasses from his carry-on bag and turns to where he left off in his book.

 

They’re back in the States in time for brunch at a diner on the road from Utah to New Mexico. By mid-afternoon they’re being debriefed, and by dinner time Clint is staring at a “glowy blue cube in a big harness thingy” (His own words). The Pegasus Facility isn’t as nice as their New York base, or the shiny new Helicarrier with all its bells and whistles, but the stark white secrecy of the underground labs is perfect for the sort of things that they’re doing. Not that Clint knows exactly what they’re doing to the glowy cube- _the Tesseract_ , Dr. Selvig corrects him, looking mildly irritated in a very Nordic way. That would be above his clearance level. But the survivalist in Clint knows, even without specific instructions, not to touch the thing. Despite the temptation, years of experience have taught him to stay away from things that shine and hum from no identifiable power source. He works for a top-secret government agency. He’s not stupid.

 

“Pretty impressive, huh?” Phil stands next to him, hands clasped behind his back. Around them, scientists run around, spouting technobabble like their lives depend on it.

 

“It’s certainly… bright.” Clint blinks. “I’m going to have to spend all day staring at this thing, aren’t I?”

 

“’Fraid so.” Phil smiles wryly. Clint can’t help but smile back.

 

Surveillance on the Tesseract is far from the most exciting job Clint’s ever had. He sits up on the balcony, stares at the people working down below, and keeps an eye out for anything sketchy. Selvig is pretty nice, if a little humorless, and the other PhD’s seem to really care about what they’re doing. The Tesseract will sputter every once in a while, but most of the time it’s a steady, monotonous glow. Phil visits every few hours to bring him coffee or sandwiches or snacks, and to chat. A few times, in between shifts, they’ll crowd into a supply closet and rut like horny teenagers, fumbling out a quickie before Clint is needed in the lab and Phil has to go back to paperwork, coordinating Natasha’s most recent undercover efforts and corralling Tony Stark’s shenanigans. As the Avengers Initiative slowly gains momentum, Phil gets busier and busier. He’s the one doing most of the work on it, pushing it every step of the way. Fury’s got his back, especially when the World Security Council decides to give them a hard time, but it’s Phil’s passion that drives the project. And for all Stark’s bad behavior and talk about not playing well with others, Phil knows that when the time comes he’ll step up to the plate. He’s got faith, even when Fury starts talking about shelving the whole Initiative.

 

That faith only grows when the Antarctic team announces that they’ve found Steve Rogers.

 

It takes a lot to get Coulson’s feathers ruffled. But when Phil comes to visit Clint up on his perch on one February afternoon, Clint can see the excited tension in the way he holds his shoulders, in the jerky _zip_ of his pace. There’s a grin hiding behind his calm exterior and it’s fighting its way out.

 

Clint’s seen that expression before. That’s the expression Phil got in San Francisco last year. The Captain America trading card that was Clint’s fifth anniversary present to him lies hidden away in their shared safety deposit box, carefully ensconced in a clear plastic slip cover. That’s the look Phil gets when he comes home in the evening to find Clint splayed out naked on the bed with the handcuffs dangling from his wrist invitingly. The only things that make Phil smile like _that_ are either related to his childhood icon or to his boyfriend, and as Clint’s right there…

 

“Holy shit, did they…?” Clint says, because the Search For Steve Rogers is SHIELD’s worst kept secret. Phil nods once, like he’s been electrocuted, and pure joy spreads across his face for a split second before schooling back into a careful blank. Warmth blossoms in Clint’s belly at the look on his face, and his stomach twists. He wants, more than anything, to smile right back, wide enough to split his mouth in two. He wants to see Phil smile again.  _Oh_ , he thinks absently, _this is what love feels like._

 

A few months after that Clint’s working the late shift, as usual, and Phil comes in to check on him. He brings him a pack of M&M’s and, when no one’s watching, a kiss. They murmur their goodnights to each other and, as Clint watches Phil retreat back to his office, he rubs the pad of his thumb over his bottom lip, where he can still feel Phil’s breath.

 

Then an alarm goes off, and everything goes to shit.

 

It’s the last time Clint sees Phil before blue envelopes his heart.

  



	24. XiChang, China

After The Avengers’ first fight, Clint asks to be assigned to a mission as far away from New York as possible.

 

They send him to China.

 

It’s certainly… different. Clint’s never been a huge fan of Asia- he feels alienated enough when he’s in Europe and can barely understand what everyone’s saying, and its only worse when not only do people sound different but they _look_ different, too. He has the same problem with Africa. Which isn’t to say that he has a problem with Asia and Africa, that came out wrong. He’s not a racist, Jesus, and why would you even imply that, dude.

 

Clint is used to feeling out of place. He hates it. But right now he feels like maybe he deserves it. The only time in the last three months when he felt like he belonged was born out of artificial love, the loyalty Loki planted in his heart curling around his insides to make a home.

 

The rest of the team walks around him on eggshells, carefully avoiding any mention of Loki, of Coulson. They aren’t unkind, but they go quiet when he walks into the room, as if their secrets might get stuck in his ears and then threaded out, one by one, to some stranger with a spear. Even with Tasha, he hasn’t felt like he’s in place.

 

Clint has never been a big dreamer, but he has nightmares, now. Nothing has been the same since he woke from a world clouded with electric blue. So he goes to China, and tries to fade into his work.

 

They set him up in a hotel, but he spends most of his time in a self-made nest on the roof of a nearby building, doing surveillance on his target. The man is some sort of drug lord or trafficker or pimp or whatever. Clint had only read enough of the file to ascertain that the mission wasn’t supernatural or extraordinary in any way before accepting the assignment. He sits in the sun, in the rain, in the smog and hail and choking humidity. He narrows his eyes through the scope of his rifle, bow and arrows packed up and untouched in his rented room. He does not speak. He barely moves.

 

He watches.

 

China is grey and alien. Clint spends a month in his perch, thinking about anything and everything. In his dreams there is blue and green and doors he cannot open, bodies he is not allowed to see.

 

Phil was cremated. His family got all of his possessions, his medals, his books and papers. His family got a file full of lies about Phil’s death in a car accident, and a silver urn. All Clint has left are memories, and his own guilt. And a wallet full of bloodstained trading cards.

 

Phil had taken Captain America #1 from their lock box at the bank, hoping to get it signed with the others. To any other collector it’s a piece of memorabilia, the rarest of the rare, a great find. To Clint, it’s more than a particularly expensive square of paper. To Clint, it’s six years gone, lost.

 

Clint is used to losing people. His mother and father, his friends at the circus, Barney. He’s done it often enough that he’s gotten the grieving process down to a subtle art. He spent the first few days after Natasha laid a hand on his arm over a plate of shwarma expecting to look up and see Phil’s eyebrows arching at him in disapproval, to hear his voice in his ear. He trashed his room. He asked Tony about the unfinished plans for Life Model Decoys and got a worried look in return. Natasha snuck into his room, stole every sharp object he’d hidden there (which was a substantial amount), and stared at him when he confronted her about it with a stony face and sad eyes.

 

There’s no one to worry about him in China. There’s no one who feels like they need to make a show about how they trust him, really, honest. There’s no one to speak to, no one to hide from.

 

He puts a bullet in the brain of the target as rain wets his hair, soaks through his clothes. Watered-down blood trickles into the drain below. Clint sits on his perch and watches the people on the street, unmoving, through a haze of blue that has nothing to do with magic.

 


	25. Yokohama, Japan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was planning on waiting a day between posting the previous chapter and this one, but I'm not a sadist. Be not afeared, gentle reader. 
> 
> And holy crap, this is the penultimate chapter! When did that happen?

After he’s done in China, they send him to Thailand. To Korea. To Myanmar. Clint makes his way across Asia, not asking questions and not getting answers, tracking a gang of drug traffickers over the length and breadth of the continent. He moves over borders and sits in trains, planes, and rental cars. He sends bullets sailing into men who deserve worse than death, and into those who probably deserve better. He sends his arrows, razor sharp, through heads and chests and arms and legs. He shoots until his fingers bleed, and then he keeps shooting.

 

He never misses.

 

Clint gets his instructions over the phone. He hasn’t been back to the States in nearly four months. Every once in a while he gets calls from Natasha, single syllable conversations.

 

“Are you alright?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Are you eating?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Are you ready to come back?”

 

Clint looks out the window of his latest crappy hotel, over a view of Seoul or Hong Kong. “Not yet.”

 

Natasha understands. She asks nothing of him, and expects nothing. She knows him well.

 

They send him to Vietnam, and for a week his nightmares shift from his time under Loki’s spell, now a familiar terror, to a dark jungle years ago, and a hand clutched tight in his, and the smell of burning flesh. The scars under his ribs ache, and he wakes to cold sweat and no one there beside him.

 

The trail ends in Japan. It’s not that it goes cold- it’s gone cold before and Clint has picked it up again- but it simply stops. Clint spends a day or two in fear that the op had turned against his favor before realizing that it’s just… done. He’s completely wiped out the gang. The mission is over. He has done his job, done it well, and over the phone the temporary handler whose name he hasn’t bothered to learn tells him to return to the US for debriefing.

 

Clint misses the red-eye flight that SHIELD books him. And the next one. And the next one. He doesn’t answer his cell phone. In less than 24 hours, Clint Barton goes completely off-grid, disappearing into thin air.

 

He sits in a bar down a claustrophobic side street, nursing a Japanese beer and running the tips of his fingers over the newest scars on his body. A line of crooked stitches runs down his side, and he touches it appraisingly through the cotton of his t-shirt. There’s a television playing in the corner of the bar, running the news in a language Clint barely understands (though his Japanese is markedly better than his French). His eyes focus on the screen as footage of the previous day’s action plays, video of the Hulk smashing, Cap throwing his shield, Stark zooming around, Natasha vaulting off ledges, and Thor… hammering various enemies. They crash around New York City and it cuts to the team, standing victorious after the fight, dirty and beat-up but all alive and smiling. Except Natasha, but on her a smile looks a lot like a death threat, so that’s probably for the best.

 

He should go back. He wants to go back. But he doesn’t know if he can, and the uncertainty cuts through him like a knife.

 

He ends up spending most of his nights here, in this dive of a bar, drinking and watching what could have been his team on TV. They were his team, once, but they don’t need someone like him. He’s a killer, not a hero. What he did under Loki’s spell and what he’s done over the last few months only prove that.

 

He drinks his beer and tries very hard not to think. His wallet sits in the pocket of his jeans, the trading cards that he always carries inside burning a brand into his thigh. On the television screen, the Avengers fight and win.

 

“They look good.” A voice rings out by his ear, and he closes his eyes. _No_. “I guess things worked out, in the end. They work well together.”

 

The last time this happened was in Indonesia, the one and only time on this last mission that Clint allowed himself to be captured. They had injected him with something in a dark syringe and he had spent half a day on the concrete floor of a cell, hands cuffed behind his back and hallucinating a man sitting beside him. He hadn’t realized it was a hallucination until later. He wonders if someone has slipped something into his drink, or if he’s just going crazy.

 

He doesn’t respond to the voice. He doesn’t want to look any sorrier than he has to- most of the other bar regulars have come to recognize him as the sad, drunk _gaijin_ who just sits there and watches TV. He doesn’t need them thinking he’s delusional, too. Why add to the list of adjectives? Why risk getting kicked out?

 

“Come on, you shouldn’t be here.” The voice continues. The familiarity of its timbre makes something dark and empty well in his stomach.

 

“What are you, my conscience?” Clint mutters, hoping no one hears him. He opens his eyes and finds himself staring, even though he knows exactly what shape his hallucination take these days.

 

Phil’s forehead is lined and his skin is pale, but his hair is combed the same as always and his eyes are blue, blue, blue. It’s the color of Clint’s dreams, and the color of his nightmares. “You really have to ask? How many times have I stopped you from doing immeasurably stupid things? You can count, I’ll wait.” His voice rasps a little, his breathing strained, but just a touch. There are dark circles under his eyes and his posture is a fraction off.

 

Why imagine him like _this_ , for God’s sake? Why make it hurt that much more? What the Hell is _wrong_ with Clint, that this is what his brain conjures up when it finally breaks?

 

Clint blinks. “Don’t have enough fingers,” he slurs.

 

Phil’s hand lands on his shoulder and fuck, he didn’t think hallucinations could do that. This is getting bad. He stands unsteadily, eyeing the exit. “I take it back, I’m not drunk enough for this.”

 

“Come on,” the hallucination’s voice is soft but commanding in his ear, a tone he’s heard a thousand times, and Clint can’t swallow around the lump in his throat. “Come on. On your feet, specialist.”

 

Clint needs to get out.

 

The bar is dark and he bumps into the other patrons as he pushes his way past, ignoring their irritated cries as he rushes out, feeling sick. It is as loud outside as it was inside, and the neon pulses around them and stains the sky, the sidewalk, even Phil. Glow-stick colors map out the shadows in his face, and Clint wonders when his imagination got so good. The Phil-thing catches his elbow and winces when he shakes it off.

 

“Stop it,” Clint orders, pointing. “I’m leaving, like you told me to, so just… don’t, okay? At least let me get back to the hotel first.” Clint refuses to have a nervous breakdown on a side street in Yokohama, surrounded by strangers. If he’s finally going to lose his shit- and okay, it’s been a long time coming- he’ll do it on his own. Same as everything.

 

The hallucination keeps silent for the walk back, not quite beside him but a few steps behind. He moves slower than he did before he was a figment of Clint’s imagination, pale and thin and clearly favoring his right side. He doesn’t wear a tie- not even a button down shirt. This phantom, this shade of Phil is dressed in the worn Harvard sweater that Clint left folded, alone, in the drawers of their apartment. Left because he couldn’t stand to look at it anymore. The night is filled with the sounds of others, and Clint has to stamp down on the memories that re-surface, memories of nights on darkened streets, walking side-by-side with the real Phil.

 

The hotel lobby is nearly empty at this time of night. The hallways, too. Clint leads the way to his room, and the phantom trails after.

 

“What do you want from me?” He says, as Phil closes the door behind them carefully. “What am I suppose to do, here? Fall to the floor and cry?”

 

“If you need to,” Phil takes a step forward, warily. The phantom’s hand is out, his eyes are blue, and it’s so normal for a second to be standing in a hotel room together, the two of them, Phil-and-Clint. The nostalgia makes Clint’s chest ache, but he laughs mirthlessly.

 

“I’ve done that enough already, thanks.” He doesn’t miss the way Phil flinches. “My last psych eval said I was just settling into acceptance, but I guess they read me wrong, huh? Guess I’m still stuck at bargaining.”

 

Phil sways a little on his feet. “Clint, I’m so sorry.”

 

That’s a new one. Clint stares for a moment, stupefied. “ _You’re_ sorry?” He says. “How are _you_ sorry? Jesus, my subconscious is reaching new lows if it’s blaming you for anything.” He lets out another broken laugh, this one a little closer to hysteria. Maybe he really is going crazy.

 

Phi takes another step forward and touches Clint again. He expects the touch to burn, or to freeze, but it’s just the familiar weight of his palm against Clint’s skin.

 

Clint shudders. Everything in him is saying that this is real, that the man before him is alive and breathing, but if he lets himself believe that he’s done, and he knows that.

 

Silence. Phil’s breathing is labored, as if he’s in pain but doesn’t want to show it. A wave of nausea turns Clint’s stomach. “Don’t touch me.” He takes an unsteady step back, panic and grief rising like bile in his throat “I can’t do this. I’m gonna close my eyes, and when I open them you’ll be gone. Just like last time.”

 

Phil’s face goes ashen, even paler than it already is. “Clint,” he says brokenly, flexing his fingers over the archer’s cheek, “Clint, I’m not a hallucination.”

 

“Don’t-“ Clint sinks to the floor, eyes squeezed tightly shut, but there is an arm around him, the other limp at Phil’s side, and a face pressed against his shirt. When he opens his eyes, Phil is still there, still holding him, and suddenly he _knows_ that everything is real, dreams don’t feel like this, _everything is real_ and he shakes apart in Phil’s arms, somehow solid around him, warm and smelling of antiseptic and aftershave. Clint’s heart cracks in a sob but Phil is there to hold it together, against all odds, whispering impossible apologies against his skin.

 


	26. Zurich, Switzerland

There are rooftops that call to them, in Abu Dhabi, in Fargo, in Moscow and Rome and Warsaw. There are alleys where they’ve stumbled, bloody and beaten, through the streets of Belfast, of Hamburg, of Nairobi. There’s a tower in New York City where they’re always welcome. There are a million places they could go, could be.

 

The hotel room is warm and comforting. Outside, snow drifts from the sky and liberally coats the ground in white, icing the spires of the city. Clint stares out the window and closes his eyes as an arm wraps around him from behind, a chin resting on his shoulder.

 

“Penny for your thoughts.” Phil’s fingers splay over Clint’s sternum and Clint leans into the touch. He can feel the scars on Phil’s chest against his bare back, from the spear, the operations, the tubes. They still bother him, but not as much as they used to. Time heals all wounds, after all. Clint’s thinking of getting that embroidered on a pillow to keep in Phil’s office.

 

“How long have we been together?” He asks.

 

Phil presses a kiss to his shoulder. “Seven years, three months, five days, and six hours.” Of course he knows to the hour. But-

 

Clint furrows his brow. “That’s not right. Fargo was six years and ten months ago.”

 

“If you know then why did you ask?” It’s a rhetorical question. “We’re counting from different times.”

 

“When are _you_ counting from?”

 

“The day we met. Obviously.”

 

Clint thinks back to stumbling down a filthy alley in New York, one arm slung around Phil's shoulder, bleeding. Clint had really needed a shave, and he’d been decked out in a wardrobe he’d collected from the Salvation Army, and he’d been stabbed stabbed a few minutes earlier. He’d also killed a couple of weird looking would-be rapists who, as luck would have it, turned out to be mutated escapees from a science lab.

 

Looking back, turning up on SHIELD’s radar was the best thing that could have happened to him then; a homeless ex-carnie vigilante with a talent for being in the right place at the wrong time. He remembers looking at Phil, clad in his perfect black suit, and wondering what he’d gotten himself into.

 

“Obviously.” He echoes. Phil hums.

 

“We should really get dressed. We have to be at the press conference in an hour.” He turns to grab his shirt and Clint lets out an annoyed groan and pulls him back, pressing his hands against the warm skin of Phil’s chest. Phil’s tattoo- Sua Sponte, the black letters cut in half and folded back together by the scar tissue that threads through the words- peeks out from the gaps in Clint’s fingers.

 

“Remind me to annoy Bruce and then sic him on Fury. What kind of super-spy-master thinks it’s a good idea to send his best operatives on a publicity tour?”

 

“The kind who’s had the World Security Council on his ass for nearly a year and a half.” Phil holds out his right arm- his good arm- to catch the tie Clint throws at him. He ties a perfect Windsor knot one-handed and loops it around his neck. “Come here, help me with my pants.”

 

Clint sits down next to him on the bed and maneuvers Phil’s slacks up over his knees. Getting dressed can be somewhat of an uphill battle these days, though Phil’s physical therapist has been teaching him how to do a lot of things he used to take for granted. He can’t lift his left arm like he used to, and has trouble with some of his nerve endings and tendons. They had to cut a lot to put him back together, which Clint thinks is kind of counter-intuitive, but it worked so he isn’t complaining. Phil’s gained back a lot of the muscle he lost lying in a bed in one of SHIELD’s secret medical facilities, and when he’s all dressed up and at attention he looks almost exactly as he did a year ago, standing in the basement of the Pegasus Facility in New Mexico, kissing Clint goodnight.

 

“You know, Tony’s been saying he’s going to build something for your arm,” Clint chats as he pulls on his own sweater. He’s wearing something with sleeves, if only because it’s so damn cold outside. Phil rolls his eyes as he ties an impressive one-handed knot in the laces of his shoes.

 

“Knowing him I’ll end up with a cannon attached to my shoulder.”

 

Clint grins. “ _I_ think that would be cool.”

 

“Of course you do.” Phil smiles and it’s a mix of exasperation, indulgence, and fondness.  “Are you going to wear a tie?”

 

“No, and you can’t make me.” Clint makes a face. “I’ll wear slacks, but that’s all you’re getting.”

 

“I couldn’t be expected to ask for any more.”

 

There’s a series of rapid thumps on the door, followed by one huge bang. “Hey, lovebirds!” Tony’s muffled shout leaks into the room. “Come out, we’re going to get waffles!”

 

“It’s nearly lunchtime!” Clint yells back.

 

“It was Thor’s turn to choose.” Steve’s reply makes the corners of Phil’s mouth twitch.

 

“We shall partake in the glorious ritual of BRUNCH!” The Norse god booms, and the drawers of the bedside table rattle. Shaking his head, Phil stands and crosses the room.

 

The rest of the Avengers wait in the doorway. Tony flashes a million-watt smile. “Hey, Phil. What do you say is better, waffles or pancakes? Thor  and I say waffles, but these heathens here disagree." He gestures to Bruce and Natasha.

 

“It's pancakes.” Phil deadpans. “It's always pancakes, Stark, come on.”

 

Bruce smiles and adjusts his glasses. “Sorry, Thor.”

 

“Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion.” Natasha’s wearing her usual blank, unamused expression, but her eyes sparkle. “Ready to head to the restaurant?”

 

“One sec,” Phil says as Clint calls, “Wait for me!” from inside the room. The archer jogs up and closes the door after them, shoving the key card in his pocket and grabbing Phil’s hand in his. He grins, and their matching rings, that still rub raw and new over their knuckles, clink together softly.

 

“Right, let’s go!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to thank everybody who stuck with and read this! You guys are the best audience a gal could hope for. Thank you for all your feedback and support, your comments really make my day :) It's been fun!
> 
> EDIT: A charming young person going by the name of Christine has done some truly lovely art inspired by this fic! Check out what she's done, it's really great: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Q3uKADXoDmI/UAEku61vAGI/AAAAAAAABPk/709dcooxUqo/s1600/phil_barton03.jpg


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